It’s business as usual for this Mohawk First Nation’s marijuana stores while court challenges planned

Seaira Maracle, 28, pours a cannabis salve based on a traditional recipe for arthritis into containers for sale. She is an alchemist at Legacy 420 at Tyendinaga, Ont. (CBC) In one of the production rooms of Legacy 420, the first marijuana retail outlet to open in the Mohawk community of Tyendinaga, Seaira Maracle, 28, brews a cannabis ointment based on a traditional recipe for arthritis.

She scoops the substance from a stainless steel double-boiler and pours it into glass jars.

"I learned it from my Elders, from my grandfathers," said Maracle, whose job title is alchemist.

The Legacy 420 facility also includes a kitchen and a laboratory where everyone wears white lab coats and features a massive glass contraptions for extracting oil from cannabis.

And, like more than 31 marijuana stores operating throughout this community, which sits about 200 km east of Toronto, it will keep its doors open, selling the ointment along with more than 60 cannabis products, after the new federal and provincial laws come into force Wednesday. Jason Brant is the chief of the Tyendinaga Mohawk Police. (CBC) Tyendinaga Mohawk Police Chief Jason Brant said his officers won’t be moving on any of the cannabis stores.

"We are still looking for direction from the legislative body here on the territory," said Brant.

Brant said his force’s resources are limited, putting any thought of a cannabis enforcement operation out of the question for now in a territory that bristles at the presence of the Ontario Provincial Police.

The Tyendinaga police have a total of seven officers and one works per shift, he said.

"To do something of this magnitude — we can’t do it with this many people, if in fact we were going to do it at all," said Brant. Ontario delay presents opportunity

For Tim Barnhart, owner of Legacy 420, Ontario’s decision to delay licensing private cannabis shops until April 2019 presents a lucrative opportunity for business in Tyendinaga.

"We are not fools, we see a trend and a lucrative market we can utilize for the next six to 12 months," he said.

"We are going to take that."

Barnhart employs about 43 people with a payroll of $3.7 million. He said his operations generate about $20 million in revenue a year. Tim Barnhart, owner of Legacy 420, plans to keep operating after Oct. 17. (CBC) Barnhart said that his operation meets all the aims of the federal law, including age restrictions, product quality control, a closed production and retail loop to keep out organized crime along with a high level of security.

If his compound, which is ringed by metal fencing topped with barbed-wire, is ever raided, he plans to open up the next day and launch a constitutional challenge.

"We have been assured by lawyers that we are constitutionally sound," said Barnhart. Constitutional challenge planned

Seth LeFort, a Tyendinaga member who was charged with trafficking last November after police in Six Nations, Ont., raided his dispensary there, said he is planning a constitutional challenge to Canada’s new pot law as part of his case. An officer from the Six Nations police aims an assault rifle during a Nov. 16, 2017, raid of the Mohawk Medicine herbal dispensary in Six Nations. (Submitted by Seth LeFort) LeFort said he would have faced a fine in the thousands of dollars on a guilty plea, but he chose to launch the constitutional challenge as a matter of principle."The issue I am raising is we have an inherent right as Onkwehón:we [the people] to make medicine and to have an economy," said LeFort."We have a right to add new technology and knowledge to our medicine chest."LeFort said he believes the new […]

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